Okay, I'm new to the forum, but I'm a long time audiophile. Considering my 10 years of carefully piecing together my digital system, I recently added a new turntable and started the whole new world of analog sound. To my surprise, I could not believe the difference. Even with an entry level turntable, crappy cables, and a mediocre phono stage amp, I had excellent sound. Since then I've upgraded to all class B analog components--a VPI scout, musical fidelity phonostage amp, and sumiko blue point special cartridge. This all feeds into my AVP 2, using the analog pass through mode--for unaltered analog sound. The result...superior sound. I have cued CD's on my Levinson 390s to the same point as the vinyl album...and switched back and forth to my hearts delight--and even inexperienced listeners could hear the difference.
What I cannot figure out, after spending almost 5 large for a Levinson CD player is WHY high end audio companies have not really endorsed better digital media. Part of the reason the sampling rate on CD's is what it is (so I've heard) is because this captures frequencies audible by the human ear with excellent precision--and at the time, within the constraints of a 600mb CD. Now with gigs of space available on newer discs...why haven't we started developing better digital media. CD players seem to still be at the forefront. And DVD-audio/SACD formats themselves are obsolete.
I would love to know if there has been any discussion on what new digital music (not video) format will be the future--and how much it's going to cost me to replace my new EXTREMELY expensive Levinson CD player.
I like 2 channel audio (not 5.1). It seems to me that digital audio quality could be vastly improved with little effort now. While the focus of blu-ray/HD-DVD has been on the video aspect, I almost feel that audio has been ignored.
Regards,
Jonathan Schweid, M.D.
Okay, I'm new to the forum, but I'm a long time audiophile. Considering my 10 years of carefully piecing together my digital system, I recently added a new turntable and started the whole new world of analog sound. To my surprise, I could not believe the difference. Even with an entry level turntable, crappy cables, and a mediocre phono stage amp, I had excellent sound. Since then I've upgraded to all class B analog components--a VPI scout, musical fidelity phonostage amp, and sumiko blue point special cartridge. This all feeds into my AVP 2, using the analog pass through mode--for unaltered analog sound. The result...superior sound. I have cued CD's on my Levinson 390s to the same point as the vinyl album...and switched back and forth to my hearts delight--and even inexperienced listeners could hear the difference.
What I cannot figure out, after spending almost 5 large for a Levinson CD player is WHY high end audio companies have not really endorsed better digital media. Part of the reason the sampling rate on CD's is what it is (so I've heard) is because this captures frequencies audible by the human ear with excellent precision--and at the time, within the constraints of a 600mb CD. Now with gigs of space available on newer discs...why haven't we started developing better digital media. CD players seem to still be at the forefront. And DVD-audio/SACD formats themselves are obsolete.
I would love to know if there has been any discussion on what new digital music (not video) format will be the future--and how much it's going to cost me to replace my new EXTREMELY expensive Levinson CD player.
I like 2 channel audio (not 5.1). It seems to me that digital audio quality could be vastly improved with little effort now. While the focus of blu-ray/HD-DVD has been on the video aspect, I almost feel that audio has been ignored.
Regards,
Jonathan Schweid, M.D.